A modern design for a bi-level car with low-level entry ought to be able to incorporate a small elevator of some manner. Certainly buses have wheelchair lifts; The train car 'elevator' would merely need to lift further vertically.
More efficient, I can see. Smoother ride, not so much, because I suspect the ride is a much stronger function of the track than the car. (Bad track will cause a bad ride regardless of car; good track will be at least a satisfactory ride, regardless of the car.) But I really quibble with the roomier: does anyone who has actually slept in an upper bunk on both a Viewliner and a Superliner agree with that statement? Even aside from the headroom in the upper bunk, I believe the Viewliner roomette holds more luggage and allows more dressing area when the room is in the night configuration.
Concur. View liners are significantly roomier.
That's true.
Well, a precedent has been made with the new Viewliner II's. They lost an entire roomette to their new toilet rooms. So, if some new Superliner design needed to loose a roomette to a lift/elevator, so be it.
Don't wheelchair restricted passengers in the current Viewliner handicapped room, also have to stay in there for most of their trip? I mean, the hallways, "dog legs" (what's between bedrooms and roomettes), and those inter-car walkways, aren't exactly wheelchair friendly. I mean, on the current Viewliners, someone in a wheelchair is expect to go directly into their room, and no further.
The handicap room of the car closest to the diner is on the diner end of that car. And the new diners will have a handicap table on the end of the diner car that connects to that car. I believe there is some sort of handicap seating in the current diners, but am not sure.
If Amtrak follows through on the LSA plan discussed in the Crescent PIP report and what was indicated a year or two back in the Amtrak Inspector General report on the Viewliner II order, the typical staffing will become 2 attendants for 3 Viewliner sleepers. The attendants would split the responsibility for the center car. This would reduce staffing costs and increase revenue by freeing up the LSA roomette in the center sleeper car for revenue sale.
I would expect there to be at least some minor design and equipment changes in the Viewliner II diner cars from the 8400 (with regards to the interior, The frame, electrical, trucks will be the result of a new build decades later so those won't be exactly the same). The 8400 was a testbed, so it should have resulted in design changes in response to feedback. But the new diners should be pretty close to the 8400 with regards to any ADA access issues.
